Parenting: back to it

As some of the more loyal Dadwagon readers may have noticed, I went on vacation last week and thus was absent from the site. Apparently, my replacement, Warren, left some of my fellow Dadwagoners perhaps hoping I was fatally injured while “knee deep in pussy somewhere in the Caribbean”.

Nathan, who is the author of the above quote was wrong, however. Whichever part of my anatomy reached the pussy, it wasn’t my knee.

Now, Nathan and Matt travel for their work a great deal, and I imagine they have grown accustomed to the sense of disorientation that comes with returning to your child after an absence. I’m not. That helps explain, a little, my reaction when I got back in town yesterday and collected JP from his mother.

First, there was a flood of relief. I don’t know if all parents experience this, but for me, as a divorced father, there is a palpable sense of something gone wrong when I don’t have JP around. This unease only lessens during my time with JP. Not that I don’t appreciate having some part of my life to myself, but no, there is no substitute for the presence of my child, even (or especially) when he’s asleep.

That said, even with me gone from JP for just a week, the return to parenting was a shock. Did anyone out there notice that this raising-a-kid-thing takes some work? Whew. I’m exhausted.